[stueber]

Dear Phil,

In the textlabel command
($width = $txt->textlabel($x,$y, $font, $size, $text, %opts)
 I find an option
-rotate => $deg
With this I could rotate my text by 90 degrees. But I would like to
format a Japanese text the normal way, this means all characters
remain upright but in a perpendicular row (which is normal in
Japan :-) )  Placing the characters by single character strings below
each other does not work either, since at least the interpunctation marks
(brackets, full stop, quotes etc) have to be different in a perpendicular
line. For instance brackets are indeed rotated by 90 degrees, full stops
are placed in the upper right corner instead etc.
I attach an image of a text sample where you can see that the
comma is not correctly placed.

Greetings
Kurt

[Phil]

I think textlabel is set up strictly for left-to-right text, and the whole thing can be rotated at some angle. To get vertical text with unrotated characters and proper punctuation will be very difficult. Have you tried HarfBuzz::Shaper support in PDF::Builder? The example for it shows some Chinese text in vertical mode -- no punctuation there, but you should try it anyway to see if it does the job for you. That might be a lot easier than trying to bend textlabel() to handle this.

[Phil]

Note: be careful choosing your .ttf or .otf CJK font file. Some do not permit embedding the font at all (requiring that the recipient have their own copy); some insist on embedding the entire font file (your PDF gets really huge); and some will permit embedding of a subset. Try to choose one that does the subset, as it will minimize the size of your PDF file.

[Phil]

Have you had any luck trying out PDF::Builder with HarfBuzz::Shaper to do your vertical text Japanese?

[Phil]

With no response from the OP, I'll assume that HarfBuzz::Shaper does the job. If not, this ticket can be reopened.

[Phil]

By the way, Kurt, if HarfBuzz::Shaper does the job for you, and you have any nice tricks for using it for vertical mode CJK texts, please feel free to share so I can update and expand the documentation!